Wraith Queens

At the heart of every hive there is a queen, and she is the one in command. Only Wraith Queens can give birth to new Wraith, and they lead their warriors with an absolute telepathic grip. Craftier, more powerful and more dangerous than any soldier, they are the true mistresses of Pegasus.

Among the Wraith, everything starts with the queen. She decides, she breeds, she leads. Her warriors obey her through a mental link no male can break. Taking on a hive really means taking on its queen, and it is often by targeting her that one hopes to bring the whole swarm to its knees.

A Wraith Queen does not just give orders. She manipulates, seduces, reads minds, and like the others feeds on the life of her victims. Several rival queens compete for the galaxy's hunting grounds.

Their infighting is sometimes the only chance of survival for the humans caught between them: as long as the queens are fighting each other, they are not hunting together.

The Wraith Queens draw their strength from two very old images. First, that of the hive, the insect world where everything revolves around a single egg-layer. Among bees as among ants, the queen is the colony's only mother: without her, everything collapses, and thousands of workers live and die in her service. A relentless organization, with no room for the individual.

Second, that of the predator. By feeding on the life of their prey, the Wraith take up the vampire myth, and their queens are its most seductive and most deadly version, in the tradition of the femme fatale who charms before she devours.

By combining the chilling organization of the anthill with the poisonous charm of the predator, Stargate makes its queens enemies of a special kind, where seduction and death walk hand in hand.